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| It builds and builds but then towards the end it just drops like a rock by WITTGENSTEIN 08/27/2011, 2:26am PDT | ||||
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| They had way too many plot threads and not enough time to conclude them. I was really impressed with how every time I thought I was entering the endgame things moved on and whisked me to a new location, but they ran out of ideas and writing to hold it together. The motivations of the Bond villain make no goddamn sense. Bob Page was a megalomaniac and a smug intellectual. But this guys' motives are absolutely ridiculous. The references to the original game are mostly worthless asides in e-mail texts with references to names you've seen before. HEY, REMEMBER THIS GUY? HE'LL BE IN DEUS EX! One way they sold this game was that we would get to see the beginnings of UNATCO. Well the Statue of Liberty wasn't blown up in a spectacular finale (the event that triggered UNATCO's formation in the first game) so they fucking failed on that part.
The endings are a new level of bullshit. I thought that Harvey Smith was a fucking flaming liberal shithead but the endings from Invisible War are peanuts compared to the phoned-in conclusions in this game. I don't want to spoil anything, but the last level's main opposition comes from ZOMBIES. Yes, zombies. After that you get the grand pick-3 (with a bonus 4th that I assume will be the "canon" ending to avoid stomping on Deus Ex 1's toes). All of them are monologues of Jensen talking to himself while stock footage rolls of various stupid shit. I even saw some ENRON/BIG OIL protest pictures in there along with a sign of a house being foreclosed on. MAN IS THIS GAME TOPICAL OR WHAT. I met people. I talked a guy who had been shot through the spine into not killing himself via morphine overdose. I told him he needed to fucking live, even if he was going to choose to be a paraplegic instead of taking cybernetics because of his beliefs. Did I ever hear a word about that guy again? NOPE. How about those companies I've visited? Those places I've been to? Those gangs I made deals with? Hey Jensen, what about your "real" parents? SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS. ADAM JENSEN IS HAVING A SOLILUQOY ON HUMAN NATURE AND HOW COMMUNISM ONLY WORKS IN THEORY, FUCK. Also, I think Squaresoft's influence on this title can be seen most palpably in the bosses. They are shitty bosses. Their only qualities are that they are bosses that you have to kill. No other interesting backstory. I completed the game and I STILL HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHO THEY ARE OR WHO THEY WORKED FOR OR HOW THEY GOT MIXED UP IN THIS SHIT. They even look like they came out of the big book of Squaresoft archetypes. There's the 7-foot tall 300 pound American guy with the Patton-esque accent and the big fucking gun. There's the silent raven-haired ninja chick who's really agile. (I was hoping this would turn out to be a young Anna Navarre from Deus Ex 1 but NO FUCK YOU THAT WAS JUDGED TOO GOOD AN IDEA). And there's the Slavic fuck who I guess is a slavic fuck. I don't really know what his deal was. Bob Page is seen in the beginning intro of the game, and then in a secret Metal Gear Solid-style audio-only conversation at the end after the credits roll, linking Human Revolution to the original in a minimal way. I think you see Tracer Tong as a young kid as well hopping on a boat. HEY THAT GUY GROWS UP TO HELP YOU IN THE FIRST GAME! (applause) This all just feels like they took pages out of the George Lucas school of prequel-telling. No substance, just general nods and asides and occassional cameos to vaguely tie the two products together. On a scale of Star Wars prequels I'd rate Deus Ex Human Revolution a Revenge of the Sith. The gameplay is good and addicting. Smashing peoples heads in is fun. Jumping three stories and slamming into the ground knocking everybody around you down is fun. Aside from the total abortion of a final level where the only challenging thing you face is the prospect of running out of ammo with the sheer number of bodies you've piled up the game is enjoyable from start to almost finish. As a stand alone product it's definitely one of the top 3 games of the year. But the way it's all wrapped up leaves almost as bitter a taste in my mouth than Invisible War. You barely see "The Illuminati". You don't see MJ-12 at all. The game raises more questions than it answers. And for something I've been waiting 12 years for, that's just a disappointment. Still better than Invisible War, though. |
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